ENGL 121
The Literature of Crime Fall 2024
Division I W Writing Skills

In this course, we will examine how the law intersects with literature in surprising ways, refracting across an array of plays, novels, films, and TV shows. We will use the law as a prism to explore revenge stories, cop shows, murder mysteries, and hardboiled detective fiction. In each instance, we will need to consider narrative framing, the contested interpretation of events, and authority in multiple senses of that term; punishment, retribution, and mercy; law, norms, and social order; and others. Likely titles include: Django Unchained, Inglourious Basterds, The Oresteia, Hamlet, short stories and novels by Melville, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, True Detective, and The Wire. We will set these questions against contemporary debates in critical legal studies and the fight against mass incarceration as we try to figure out the ways that literature, plays, and film can represent justice and injustice.